


Make Me Laugh

by nottinghamroad



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: AU: with powers, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Charles is a comic, Erik is a comic, Happy Ending, M/M, reality show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:48:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24204667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nottinghamroad/pseuds/nottinghamroad
Summary: Erik Lehnsherr is a successful comedian. He starts a reality show to bring the spotlight onto up and coming comedians, with one catch--they have to make him laugh. He has never laughed at any other comedian.Charles Xavier is a university professor who does standup as a hobby, and catches Erik's attention. Can he make Erik laugh? Can he survive the reality show? What about the budding tension backstage between him and the host?
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr & Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 76





	1. You Don't Stand a Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my friday writing group for cheering me on with this. I couldn't ask for better friends.

“I’m not saying you don’t have potential. Surely there’s a niche audience on TikTok for this type of humor, so surely you can find your way back to the graveyard of tired tropes and bits from whence you came.” Erik curled his spread fingers into his palm, and re-extended his pointer and middle finger. The metal bar sitting next to him lifted a foot off the ground, and formed itself into an arrow pointing offstage. 

A short, besuited young man followed the arrow offstage, his footsteps heavy and defeated. Erik watched him go. This was becoming exhausting, he didn’t know why he had issued the challenge in the first place. No one had ever made him laugh and no one ever would. This was becoming more and more of a kitschy PR stunt by the day. The director called for a break, and Erik massaged his temples. 

“Mr. Lensherr, please don’t forget you have an interview coming up with Jameela Jamil on your lunch.” Erik’s assistant approached him cautiously and handed him the sample list of questions that Terri had sent ahead of time to allow him to prepare his answers for some of the longer ones. He had worked briefly with Jameela doing an appearance on one of her game shows. It was a pity she hadn’t signed up for his competition, Jameela Jamil might be the only person on earth who had a decent chance at actually making him laugh. 

“My next guest is none other than the massively popular German comedian, Erik Lensherr.” Jameela’s voice was smooth and radio-ready, to the uninitiated she sounded like the bRitish version of Terri Gross. Erik knew her to be more foul-mouthed than his cousins who had served in the Navy, and possibly more cynical than even he was. She managed to balance her I havcynicism with a deep compassion and genuine love for her fellow human, and he hadn’t a clue how she managed to hold those things together. 

“Thanks for having me on, Jameela,” Erik said, adjusting his headset. They were interviewing over Skype, and he was recording his own audio so that Jameela’s producers could later meld the two audio tracks for maximal sound quality. 

“Erik, you are well known for your two Netflix specials, “Yes, This is Really It”, and “Surgery”, the former being your debut that quite frankly shook the comedy world and the second cementing your status as a cult favorite who has somehow managed to gain mainstream notoriety. Tell me, how does it feel to be the Taika Waititi of standup?” “I have to tell you, it’s quite constricting having my head as far up my ass as he does,” Erik answered easily. “Once that comparison was made, Taika himself called me and told me this was the standard way things were done and I said, mate, I will do whatever you tell me to do, you’re the expert on cult stars turned mainstream.” 

“Has he offered you a walk-on role for the sequel of  _ What We do in the Shadows?”  _ inquired Jameela. 

“Yes, well, we’ve already practiced a scene where I am the victim being eaten on the clean couch so that his fresh round of roommates can scream at him for not putting down newspapers before a feeding again, so I’d like to say that I’m well on my way there.” 

“You never know, you may just be the future of vampiric comedy,” mused Jameela. 

“I certainly hope so.” Erik hadn’t made the story up, he was, in fact, going to have a bit part in Taika Waititi’s long-awaited sequel to his vampire comedy. 

“Erik, I think it’s safe to say that you are the world’s most stick-in-the-mud comedian, would you agree with that sentiment?” Jameela somehow managed to keep a straight, television reporter face as she asked the questions over Skype, despite the fact that this audio was going to be used for a podcast and she could very easily make whatever face she wanted and no one would be any the wiser.

“Yes, that’s definitely true,” Erik said amiably. “I’ve made my living laying my whole life bare for the world to see and laugh at, and consequently I don’t find much of anything funny.” 

“I see,” Jameela said. “Another tortured male soul, alone in the world and lamenting the fact that no one understands him, is that it?” 

“Yes, that’s mostly it,” Erik agreed. “It becomes a bit difficult to find anyone funny when the entire world knows everything about you.” “That can’t really be true,” Jameela said. “All performers tend to operate on this brand of authenticity and vulnerability, especially comics, wouldn’t you say?” 

“Go on,” Erik said. 

“Well, the social media age makes it awfully easy to sniff out fakes,” Jameela continued. “Comics have always branded themselves as honest to a fault, and that tends to be their draw. But no one could actually live if their entire lives were in fact exposed to the known world. There must be parts of yourself that you keep secret from the world, parts of yourself that you have protected from the all-powerful branding of relentless authenticity.” 

“There’s not,” Erik answered. “I don’t see how I can prove that to you, though, seeing as how I decided to tell the entire world about how I woke up cumming in the middle of a colonoscopy because the anesthetist had fucked up the drug cocktail she gave me and the proctologist performing the exam had a real nose for where my prostate is, apparently. I don’t know how I can tell that story to the world and have you not believe that I’m an open book, to be honest.”

“Being an open book doesn’t mean there’s not pages that you have hidden or have otherwise chosen to not reveal to your fans,” Jameela pressed. 

“Well, the next time I cum at an inconvenient moment or somehow manage to solve the fact that I’m an unlikeable, icy asshole who can’t manage to hold down a romantic partner, my three million Twitter followers will undoubtedly be the first to know.” Erik was unruffled. 

“Well, we’ll revisit this conversation.” Jameela winked at him over the webcam. She was charming to a fault, and Erik had the urge to find some secret to tell her, but he decided to resist. 

“The biggest secret I’m keeping, Jameela, as luck would have it, is that there isn’t a single person in the world who has managed to make me laugh. Consequently, I’ve decided to offer that secret as a challenge to the living comedy world, both experts and amateurs alike.”

“Yes, your show,  _ Make Me Laugh  _ is scheduled to air its pilot episode on the first of the month, just four weeks from today!” Jameela had refocused. “How is filming going?” 

“Without giving too much away,” Erik began, “there is some stiff competition. I’ve allowed more shitty jokes than I ever thought I would permit in my presence. Not to get too full of myself, but early buzz for the show is calling me the new Simon Cowell of comedy.” 

“What, unnecessarily cruel and unkind?” Jameela quipped. 

“Yes, that, but also the sharpest mind to assess and report back on the state of comedy at large.” Erik rolled with her snarky asides. He didn’t disagree with them, he knew he deserved it. 

They continued speaking about the structure of the show, and Jameela played a sneak preview clip of a recent contestant and had Erik comment on the merits of the comic without giving too much away in regards to his judgment of their skill or lack thereof. The call ended with Jameela congratulating him again on the success of  _ Surgery,  _ his most recent Netflix special, and Erik wishing her success in being the most beautiful and ridiculously talented show woman who seemed to just be absolutely bonkers good at everything she tried. He instructed her to leave a little bit of talent for the rest of us, and Jameela stated in no uncertain terms that she would not do that. 

The call ended, and Erik looked down at his hands after he tapped the “end call” button. They were flexed with little bits of blue paint from where he had been scratching at the side of his judgment chair while he watched contestant after contestant compete to make him laugh in the initial culling rounds from that day. 


	2. Take the Chance Anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik Lehnsherr gets an interesting new addition to his comedy reality show......

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't you love it when your favorite dumb babies meet for the first time? Well, prepare yourself!

“Mr. Lensherr?” His assistant was approaching him again. 

“Rogue, I think you of all people have earned the right to call me by my first name, don’t you think?” Erik closed the laptop over which he had taken the Skype call from Jameela. 

“It’s all about professional distance, sir,” Rogue said, tucking the silver streak in her hair behind her ear. “Sir, we have new contestants for you to review. They’ve sent in tapes of their tight five, and you have about an hour to review them before it’s time to decide who will be able to perform in front of you and who doesn’t make the cut.” Erik took the USB stick that she was offering him and re-opened the laptop. The first three tight fives were nothing special, hardly worthy of even a cracked smile, but he gave them enough of a chance to not feel like an asshole for dismissing them. Not that he ever felt much regret for rejecting subpar comics, if he was honest with himself. 

The final tight five caught his attention much more quickly. The comic sat in the middle of the screen on a barstool. His khaki pants and cardigan with elbow pads gave him the unmistakable appearance of a weathered professor, but the man couldn’t have been older than in his 30s. He was arresting. He spun a tale of his first ever university lecture and how he had somehow managed to use three separate euphemisms for the perineum all in one class without realizing it. Of course, he had eventually realized it once the few titters from students in the back had grown to a roar and he had completely lost control of his classroom. He wrapped up the story by proclaiming that he was now known exclusively as “Professor Taint” in his university and was completely okay with it, because it meant his classes were always booked to the gills and he never had an issue obtaining the course load that he needed. However, he would have trouble explaining the incident to his superiors when he came up for tenure review. But, he reasoned, that was two years from now, plenty of time for him to improve his nickname to “Professor Grundle”, which almost sounded like a real last name.

What struck Erik about the delivery of this admittedly funny story was the way the man delivered the story as though he were telling an interesting anecdote to his college students that related to the classroom topic of the day. Laid back, not too self-serious, but well aware of the power of the words he was wielding with deadly comedic accuracy. Erik almost wanted to chuckle at it. 

That was enough, the almost was enough for him to admit the man to the first round of tapings. He earmarked the tight five, re-saved everything onto the USB stick, and gave it back to Rogue. She took it from him and made her way to the producer’s office to get things in order. 

Charles Xavier had seen both of Erik Lensherr’s comedy specials more times than he was willing to admit. It wasn’t his fault there was something magnetic about the man’s honesty, about the way he laid the entire story of his life bare for his audience to chew on. Charles had been in the same room with other comics and had found their brains incredibly noisy to be around. They were constantly observing their environment, finding ways to connect their immediate surroundings to their own self-hatred, and trying out half-formed bits in their minds. 

Really, telepathy wasn’t much of a gift when it came to trying to enjoy comedy. Charles tended to know what was coming at live shows, and tended to not make his way out to them very often because the speed with which a comic’s brain moved tended to be more than a little dizzying and removed all the elements of surprise that made comedy so much fun. 

He had been to one of Erik’s live shows, though, and that was different. He was different. Charles found himself frustratingly attuned to Erik’s mind, but somehow unable to actually read it, try though he might. 

The thing about being telepathic was you became excellent at filtering through the background noise of the world. There was a tremendous amount of noise in the world as it was, but for Charles, it was amplified to an almost obscene level. As a child, he had found it incredibly difficult to simply exist in the day-to-day as his powers of sensory integration began to develop. It was hard enough being a child and learning which sensory inputs in the world were the ones you ought to pay attention to and which were the ones you ought to filter out. It was cruel, really, to add an entire extra layer of sensory input to Charles’s mind as the minds of others became a shouting library that he had no choice but to listen to. 

These days, he found it very easy to turn the noise of other people’s minds down to a dull roar in his own mind and turn up the volume inputs of other parts of his life in order to focus. Being in a crowd of thousands used to intimidate the hell out of him, but he could peacefully exist in a sold-out comedy crowd now. Usually he would focus on the mind of the performer as it was quite interesting to see what they were thinking as they performed. 

But here, he found his powers drawn to Erik’s mind as if through magnetism, but the magnets were unable to click into place. Consequently, Erik’s comedy shows were positively electric to Charles. He was completely unable to read where the man was going next, and found himself surprised and delighted at Erik’s wit, self-effacing humor, and uncanny ability to lay his own life bare in a way that made his audience ravenous for more. Of course, it was helpful that Charles found Erik’s effortless incorporation of his metal-bending into his sets completely intoxicating in ways he wasn’t entirely willing to explore. Not in public, anyways. 

So why was Charles sitting on a stage at his University recording a tight five that his sister had helped him crystallize for Erik’s fucking game show? Well, Charles was sure there were very good reasons there, but he wasn’t willing to explore them right at this particular moment. He gave the recording everything he had, and Raven was either being an incredibly supportive sister or he was actually funny, because she was in hysterics by the end of the set and Charles knew then he would have to edit out her laughter in the rest of the video. 

“Professor Xavier?” Erik asked once the phone call had connected. 

“Speaking,” the professor had clearly answered the phone thinking that it was a student or perhaps someone from the administration calling him on a weekend just to bother him. That was what Erik divined from his tone, anyways. 

“This is Erik Lensherr calling regarding your taped submission to my show on the Comedy Channel,  _ Make Me Laugh.”  _

“I don’t accept spam phone calls this time of day, please try again when I’ve had approximately three more whiskeys,” the professor said, letting out a sigh as he spoke. He hung up the phone. 


	3. Chapter 3

Erik stared at the terminated call screen in his hands. This was incredible. He didn’t think he had ever had someone turn down his call like this before. He dialed the professor’s number again. As to why his subconscious mind insisted on calling Dr. Charles Xavier “the professor”, Erik knew that it definitely didn’t have to do with his history of being hot for teacher. That definitely didn’t have anything to do with anything. 

“Yes?” The professor picked up the phone again, his exasperation showing through his tone more clearly this time. 

“This actually is Erik Lensherr, I’m not sure why you didn’t believe me the first time. Should I be addressing you by your formal title, Professor Taint? Or do you prefer Dr. Grundle, I really am not sure.” 

“Holy shit.” There was a dull thud on the other line, then the professor spoke again. “Uh, you can call me Charles. Someone as well-known as yourself has certainly earned that right, you can call me Charles.” 

“Alright then, Charles,” Erik allowed for it. “Anyways, I’m calling to let you know that you’ve been accepted into a subsequent round of my show, and I would like for you to come and perform a fresh tight five for me at my comedy studio in St. James’s Park.” 

“I, uh, I’m sorry, Mr. Lensherr, I’m having trouble processing everything that you’re saying at the moment,” the professor said, stumbling over his words. Erik did not find his flustered demeanor over the phone adorable and completely charming, he most certainly did not think that. 

“Take whatever time you need to process; my offer is quite serious.” Erik waited. 

“I, uh, the thing is, I submitted that tape from quite a ways away,” the professor said after a moment of what was apparently getting himself back on his feet. 

“I noticed it was postmarked from Adelaide, yes,” Erik said, unsure how this was relevant to the conversation.

“Well, I’m currently teaching at the University of Adelaide on the Queen Mary University exchange. They don’t just do exchange programs for students, you know. Professors are able to apply for them too, and I did because I thought it would be interesting to teach in another country, albeit another English-speaking one, and the thing is, I can’t afford a plane ticket from Australia back to London right now.” The professor said all of this very fast, as though he were ashamed of what he had to say. 

“Charles, I don’t recall asking after your personal financial situation. Did I ask after your personal financial situation?” Erik began drumming his fingers on the top of the desk he was sitting at. 

“You didn’t, but I’m trying to let you know that I can’t afford to fly to England right now, as much as I would love to come home, the University only covers my flight costs at the beginning and at the end of the program.” 

“I’m not asking you to, this trip is all-expenses paid by me, of course.” Erik was doing his damndest to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Really, who did this man think he was? Had he even seen any of Erik’s comedy specials? Had he paid attention to any part of Erik’s life story? Where he had come from? His heritage? His inheritance? Erik would have to make all of these things abundantly clear to Charles at some point, and this is where it would start. 

“I can’t allow you to do that,” the professor responded almost immediately. 

“British propriety is exhausting,” Erik replied. “You are not allowing me to do anything. Your submission tape showed promise in my competition, and I have decided to allow you to compete on the show. The only caveat is that you do not pay for anything, I will be footing every bill.” 

There was silence on the other end. The professor spoke up again after a moment.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose all I can say is that I’m very grateful for your generosity and I look forward to meeting you in person.” 


	4. London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles arrives in London, and boy has he missed the place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience in between chapters. :) Pandemic life is hard but I'm still writing!

Charles was having genuine trouble holding back tears as he stepped off the plane into the Heathrow airport. He hadn’t set foot on English soil for almost a year, and it was all he could do to not break out into a rousing chorus of “God save the Queen.” He would tell no one of these highly embarrassing and stereotypical desires carved into his English soul. 

Upon finding his bag in the baggage claim area, Charles suffered a minor heart attack seeing a besuited man in sunglasses holding a sign with his name on it. 

“I’m Charles Xavier,” he told the sunglassed man. Sunglasses did not say a word, but merely nodded his head, turned on his heel, and began walking towards the car park for private vehicles. Charles followed him, and did his level best not to gasp at the limousine that was waiting for them. He must not have accomplished this rather simple goal, as Sunglasses exhaled an audible sigh waiting for him to get settled in the car and to stop exclaiming at every amenity that the limousine had to offer. Charles decided that downing two glasses of champagne in quick succession ought to do the trick to his slightly jet-lagged mind. 

The car pulled up to an ivory townhome in St. James’s Square, and Sunglasses unloaded Charles’s suitcase and had his door opened before he was able to process that they had parked. Charles stumbled his way up the stairs, heartily denying that the combination of the champagne and jet lag was going to render him very sloppy, very quickly. All he had to do was make it to a bed. 

His progress to a bed was going to be impeded, it seemed, for when he reached the top of the stairs and opened the door into the townhome with the key that Sunglasses had given him, he was met with the sight of a man sitting on the stairs in the entryway that led up to the first floor. Charles stood his suitcase on its end against the wall, and shut the door behind him. The man on the stairs looked up from his phone, and stood up, tucking it into the back pocket of his very tight jeans. Tight jeans that stood in a very appealing contrast to the tunic shirt that was tucked into the jeans and just loose-fitting enough to make him look like he had recently returned from holiday in Greece and was still sticking to the local fashions. 

“Professor Xavier, I presume? Charles?” the man extended his hand, and Charles shook it, completely unaware of whether his grip was strong enough to portray any semblance of sanity. Jet lag wasn’t going to treat him kindly at the moment, it seemed. 

“Yes, that’s me,” Charles responded. “I so appreciate your kindness and generosity, Mr. Lensherr.” “Please, we ought to be on first name terms at this point,” the man said. Erik said, Charles corrected himself. Erik said that. This world renowned comic who clearly had cash to burn said. Charles released Erik’s hand and scratched his own ear. 

“Well, Erik, I don’t know how to thank you for this, I wish there were some way for me to repay you.” Charles said. 

“The best way that you can repay me is to make me laugh.” Erik spoke quite matter of factly, as if this was something he expected. “Though no known comic that I have ever seen perform has managed to accomplish this feat, so I don’t expect that you would be able to. Though what I’ve seen from your tight five gives me some hope, so you had better get some sleep and figure out how you can make Professor Grundle return from the dead and bring us all something to look forward to. There’s instructions on the kitchen counter for how to get anything you need while you’re in town, I’ve already taken care of things with your university. My phone number is also on the kitchen counter, just as a precautionary measure, you know, to ensure things stay on schedule with shooting your part on the show.” Erik clapped a hand on Charles’s shoulder, and Charles definitely did not become immediately distracted with the weight and heft of Erik’s hand and how nice the weight of it felt even at one small pressure point on his body.

“I’ll get to exploring the house, then!” Charles called meekly after him as Erik left. 

It seemed completely, off-the-walls insane to Charles that he had this entire townhouse to himself for a stay in London that would last—well, Charles really didn’t know how long it would last. He had attempted to get into contact with his administrators to let them know what was going on, but though he had prepared himself to explain everything, they had just returned with an email telling him that everything had been sorted, he was on an approved leave of absence, and they wished him all the best in this exciting new endeavor. Charles didn’t know what to make of that, other than Erik’s connections must be very good. 

He entered the kitchen, and began to peruse the list that Erik had left for him. It was full of recommendations for any variety of food that Charles could want, plus a brief set of instructions for how to charge that food to Erik’s account while he was there. The food instructions gave way to entertainment instructions, from accessing each of Erik’s guest accounts on all of the streaming services that existed (including a Quibi, whatever the hell that was), to tickets to West End shows if Charles wanted them. Charles wondered briefly if Erik knew that he had grown up in London but had never had enough money to do any of the stereotypically touristy things associated with the city. Whether he knew it or not, Charles was having many of his fantasies fulfilled just be looking at the list. Though, not all of them. He could think of a few other fantasies that Erik might be able to fulfill, but those weren’t on the list. 

Charles sat on the kitchen stool, right in the pathway of the afternoon sun. The golden light warmed his face and set his mind at ease. Soon, it would be time to start writing another tight set to perform in front of Erik. It had been hard enough to come up with the first five minute set, but Charles knew the basic mechanics, having attended many comedy workshops for beginners on the side in Australia. He had done it just as a hobby, hoping that it would take his mind off of the increasingly difficult course load of being a tenure-track professor. 

The kitchen really was a dream. Charles let his eyes linger on every gorgeous appliance, until a bright yellow mug caught his eye. He lifted himself rather arduously from the stool to go and retrieve it, blinking his eyes to rid them of the slightly yellowy auras from being so over tired and from not having taken out his contact lenses. He prepared tea to put into the mug and walked upstairs to find a small balcony fit for two adjacent to the master bedroom. He sat on the balcony with his tea to watch London go by. How he had missed this city. 


	5. The Competition Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik and Charles meet in person for the first time.

Erik turned from one side to the other, examining himself critically in the mirror. The cobalt blue suit that Rogue had purchased for him was definitely his color, but there was something off about it. He tugged on the edges of the jacket near his waist, hoping that would solve the issue. It didn’t. He opened his drawer full of pocket squares and perused through them. Navy, turquoise, electric, none of those would provide the appropriate contrast. He happened upon a lemon colored pocket square, plucked it from its fellows, and tucked it into his breast pocket. That was precisely the contrast he was looking for. 

His phone chirped at him, and Erik answered the incoming call.

‘What is it, Rogue?” he adjusted his wristwatch as he spoke, and ran a finger over the navy leather. 

“The producers would like a word,” she said, and there was a slight muffled sound as the phone was passed to whomever Rogue was standing with. 

“This professor you invited to come, he doesn’t look fit to be on this show,” Jean Grey spoke at her usual breakneck pace on the other line. 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. We’ve never had a dress code.” 

“This show hasn’t even aired its pilot yet, there’s not enough of a history for us to have any sort of norm,” Jean said. 

“Fair enough,” Erik said. “What is he wearing?” He gathered the remaining accoutrements he needed for the day on set, placed them in his indigo satchel, and heaved it over his shoulder. 

“Khaki pants with a hole worn in one of the knees, some kind of undershirt, and a cardigan with actual patches over the elbows. It’s like he’s doing a costume play of a professor or something, really, it’s somewhat ridiculous.” Jean sounded annoyed. 

“Are you waiting for my permission to make him over?” Erik asked. He was trying desperately not to get too caught up in wondering how Charles had gotten the hole in the knee of one of his pants, and if Erik could convince him to perform certain tasks that would result in a hole in his other pant leg. No, those things were completely inappropriate for him to even consider, and he wouldn’t do it. 

Try though he might, Charles still hovered in Erik’s mind’s eye, dressed as Jean had described, but with his eyes locked on Erik, golden-yellow sunlight flashes illuminating his chestnut colored hair as he carefully let the cardigan fall off of his shoulders and pool around his feet on the ground….

“I do need your permission, yes, and your promise that you’ll sign whatever I put on the purchasing card without a question. You know I know better than you on these things.” 

“You definitely do, Jean,” Erik said. “Do what you need to do. I’ll be there inside the hour.” He hung up the phone and pressed the down button on the elevator that led up to his penthouse in Picadilly Circus. He supposed he would have chosen a slightly quieter part of London in which to live, but he had inherited the place from his parent’s metallurgy fortune and Erik wasn’t about to overcomplicate his living situation in London, not when prices for absolutely everything were always sky high. Not that he had any issue affording things in London, but that didn’t make him immune from complaining like the rest of the city about the cost of living. 

Erik handed the cab driver a £50 and instructed him to keep the change once they had arrived on set in St. James’s Square. It was a small, hidden-away black box theatre that Erik had built himself and used just for his own productions. He had insisted that his Netflix specials be filmed there as well. 

______

Charles was in the makeup chair once Erik had made his way fully on to the set. 

“Jean was right,” Erik remarked. “You did need an update to the professorial look.” 

“What, you don’t think your audience will be hot for teacher?” Charles didn’t look at him as his face was being held firmly into place by Jean Grey’s expert touch and steel grip. 

“They can be hot for teacher all they like. It’s less about the original look not being good and more about buffing the original look to really shine through on television.” Jean spoke while barely moving her lips, not breaking her concentration even for a second. Erik knew she had been the right choice to hire but was especially grateful for her at times such as these. He had very desperately needed to be saved from saying what was on his mind when Charles had mentioned the phrase “hot for teacher”. 

“We begin filming in an hour,” he told Jean. 

“I know,” she said. “Let me turn this man into the stuff of schoolgirl fantasy, it won’t take much longer.”

Schoolgirl fantasy, indeed. Erik hadn’t known that he potentially possessed a schoolgirl alter ego a la Britney Spears in “Baby, One More Time”, but that was apparently where his mind had decided to head when he watched Jean tousle Charles’s hair with some gel. Somehow it made him look like he had just spent hours in the lecture hall long after class had wrapped up, grading papers while golden sunlight fell across his dark hair. Erik looked down at his navy pants. It was time to move on from this particular train of thought before things got truly out of hand. Or head, for that matter. 

Charles had never quite felt this level of exhilaration walking offstage after a set. He had thought it was exciting submitting a tape for the original audition for Make me Laugh, but performing in front of Erik? In person? With a live, and very responsive studio audience? There was nothing like it. His heady days of having no control over his telepathy initially bore some resemblance to this rush, the feeling of everyone’s attention being on you all at once. 

But this time, everyone’s attention was deliberately on Charles. It didn’t just feel like their attention was all on him because he could read their minds and they didn’t know that and so it created this very frustrating invisible audience effect that made him quite self-conscious much of the time. It was different having everyone’s attention actually on you, and for reasons you could very much control—making them laugh. 

And make them laugh he did. He only had 5 minutes on stage again, the same length of time as his initial set, but 5 minutes was plenty of time to spin a tale of when he himself had been hot for teacher in graduate school, only to discover that the teacher himself was a furry. This, of course, led Charles to question absolutely everything about his romantic and sexual tendencies, and made him put off the idea of getting a cat altogether on the off chance that he actually did have a thing for furries, he didn’t want to put that on some poor cat! What did the cat do to deserve someone as mixed up and in their feelings as Charles could be? 

He had fucked that teacher in the end, and everything had gone perfectly normally and beautifully and it was all very mutually satisfying. Charles, as he told the crowd, was very convinced that there was no reason for him to have been worried in the first place. Until, of course, he left the man’s house and caught sight of a bright orange fursuit in the closet on his way out. So, Charles was now contractually obligated to attend his local furry convention, and he had bought himself a tabby cat themed fursuit in order to support the community. 

The crowd ate it up. Charles left the stage with their laughter ringing in his ears, feeling like he had just stepped into the warmest, most comfortable sunshine instead of the harshness of a stage spotlight. He glanced over at Erik as he left the stage, the man forever clothed in cool and dark blues, and if Charles was not quite mistaken, he saw the corner of Erik’s mouth quirk upwards on his way off. 

“You’re moving on to the next round,” Rogue informed him. Charles had been sitting in the green room, scrolling through twitter when she delivered the news. 

“That quickly?” he asked. 

“Erik goes with his gut,” Rogue shrugged. She left the room. Charles sat in stunned silence. He was going to stay in London for another week. He was moving on to the next round. Erik must have found him funny, the man didn’t lie when it came to these matters. Or, at the very least, he found him amusing enough to give him another shot. 

“Charles?” Erik’s head had appeared, peeking around the doorjamb leading ito the greenroom. “Are you coming?” 

“Coming where?” asked Charles. 

“To the Lion’s Head,” Erik answered, somewhat bemusedly. “For the after-shoot party. We do one after every taping? It was in your welcome manual at the house.” 

“Right, well, I figured that if I read thirty pages of the manual per night I might crack through half of it before my three weeks in London are up,” Charles said, standing up and straightening out his vest. Erik stood more fully in the doorway and rolled his eyes, but there was a small smile on his face. Charles couldn’t help the warmth that bloomed in his chest, knowing he was the cause of Erik making such a subtly gorgeous expression like that. 

“Wanker, it wasn’t that long.” Erik l, waiting for Charles to gather his things. Charles found it difficult to be under Erik’s gaze like this. He finished gathering his items and put them into his satchel, and looked up at Erik. He had changed into tight, black pants and a cornflower blue button down where the top two buttons had been left invitingly undone—god, it was like the man had gotten dressed just for Charles after the shoot. 

“Should I change?” Charles asked the question before he realized how it might sound. That small smile crossed Erik’s face again. 

“Do you want to?” he asked. 

“No, I just wondered if I ought to, I mean, you changed, and you look, well, like that, so, I thought it might be best etiquette if I had a different outfit for the party as well,” Charles was stumbling over his words again. It was really quite difficult for Charles to focus when Erik’s pants were that tight, and the swell of his arse was that close to him, but metaphorically ridiculously far out of reach. 

“Having trouble finding your words, professor?” Erik had the smallest corner of his lip between his teeth, and now Charles was really in trouble. He averted his eyes and charged past Erik. 

“Last one to the Lion’s Head owes the other a scotch,” Charles declared, listening for Erik’s feet to follow him. They did, but only after Charles was certain Erik exhaled in a way that was dangerously close to a laugh. They made their way outside together, and Charles brushed away a few deep green maple leaves in his way from the low-hanging tree just outside the studio


	6. The Eagle's  Talon?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for the boys to get a drink together....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. :)

Erik was fairly certain there wasn’t a single pub in all of England that wasn’t named after an animal and a body part. He only wished he could go to a bar named something more amusing than the Lion’s Head. Why not the Hedgehog's Pin? Or the Eagle’s Talon? The possibilities were endless, and yet Erik had found himself in a truly insane number of bars that were named the Lion’s Head or the Lion’s Mane. Jolly old England. Predictable, but somehow he still found it charming enough to stay there. He wondered all the time if he ought to resettle in Germany and take his comedy work back there, but something about England made him want to stay. It definitely wasn’t some _one_ who made him want to stay, just some _thing._ Some unnamable thing. 

The Lion’s Head was as crowded as it ever was on a weekend night. Erik walked in with Charles by his side, talking to himself vigorously in his mind that they were not arriving together, no, they were just arriving at the same time. They had merely walked together from the studio, they weren’t going to the bar _together_ and there was a difference. 

“Scotch, single malt, neat” Charles spoke to the bartender in a terse clip, more terse than Erik had experienced of him, anyhow. 

“Erm, I’ll have the same, I suppose,” Erik echoed. “Thank you,” he added, as something of an afterthought, attempting some semblance of politeness. 

“Good shoot, then?” Charles asked, taking a sip of his drink when it had arrived. 

“I thought you didn’t talk to solicitors until after three whiskeys,” Erik said, sipping his own drink. 

“After three drinks is when I might start doing things I regret a little bit more than talking to solicitors,” Charles returned. 

“Oh yeah?” asked Erik. “What have you done lately that you regret?” He could feel a little bit of a smile playing at his lips. It was getting harder and harder to stick to his original assertion that nobody in the comedy world could make him laugh. Or at least, smile. And it was truly mind-boggling and absurd that this was coming from an amateur, of all places. 

“What, not so sure that a buttoned-up professor could have regrets?” Charles was loosening up a little bit, easing himself into the conversation. 

“No, not at all,” Erik replied easily. “I’m sure the regrets are plentiful. I figured you stayed up nights, beating yourself up over the state of your elbow patches, that they weren’t as charmingly frayed as they could have been during a given lecture.” 

“You know more about academic life than I thought!” Charles was smiling now, and there was no denying its radiance. That man was a superconductor of natural light, it was as though he personally harnessed visible light rays from the sun itself and shone them through every part of his compact, gorgeous body, giving him a constant, soft, golden glow. 

But Erik was getting very much ahead of himself. There was witty repartee to be had here, he c He couldn’t allow himself to get caught up in those things in public. That was asking for trouble. He allowed his eyes to bounce around the rest of the bar, and they rested briefly on Rogue and Jean talking to one another at the opposite end of the bar. They had clearly had a long day.

“I spent my time in University, you know,” Erik said. “I know a thing or two about the sordid lives of professors.” 

“I slept with one of mine,” Charles said. 

“Ambitious,” Erik replied. 

“No, just horny,” Charles admitted. “I didn’t have much self control during my senior year, and he was really more of a teacher’s assistant than a professor. The age gap wasn’t that significant, but…”

“The power differential was definitely still significant,” Erik supplied. He swirled his whiskey in his glass. “Do you regret it?” 

“I regret thinking it would go anywhere,” Charles admitted. “I let my romanticism get the better of me.” 

Erik found this very endearing. “Hoping for your own _Call Me By Your Name_ moment?” he asked.

“Not what that movie is really about, but I suppose so. I guess I’ve always found some appeal in having a more experienced partner. The feeling of surrendering control in those situations, given the right circumstances of course, is really quite freeing.” Charles took another sip of his scotch. Erik felt heat rising in him.

“So you enjoy being bossed around a little, is that what you’re saying?” Erik heard the husky quality to his voice as he spoke, and hoped to god that Charles couldn’t hear it. 

“Under the right circumstances,” Charles repeated. The noise of the bar around them had faded to a dull roar in Erik’s ears. All he could focus on was Charles in front of him, Charles worrying a corner of his stupidly pink lips between his teeth, Charles’s thick eyelashes and his piercing eyes beneath them. 

“What could I ask you to do right now?” Erik’s voice dropped even lower. His blood felt hot racing through his veins. A nearby small metal board used to deliver checks to bar patrons closing out their tabs vibrated nearby, and Erik became vaguely aware that he was losing his close control on his metal bending abilities the more worked up he got. 

“Anything that wouldn’t get us both arrested,” Charles answered. Erik met his eyes and was nearly bowled over by the intensity in them. 

Erik swallowed, hard. 

“That’s no good then, I was going to ask you to announce to the whole bar that you are now Sam Malone and you’ll be serving liquor the rest of the night, and then you could add unlicensed serving of alcohol to what I am sure is a lengthy rap sheet of yours.” 

Charles burst out laughing. The tension between them was momentarily broken. 

“I won’t do that,” Charles said once the laughter had passed. He lowered his voice and spoke with the smile still on his face. “

Erik’s breath caught in his throat. “Check, please,” he called to the bartender. 


	7. Lions in more than one way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys go home from the bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the gentle reader who suggested proofreading--thank you, I did it this time. XD You know how sometimes you move the location of a document and formatting gets fucked and you don't notice? Happened to me.

Back at the townhome, Charles was buzzing. He hung up his jacket in the absurdly large closet in the doorway, and waited for Erik to do the same. 

“I believe I have a bottle of Glenmorangie stashed around here somewhere,” Erik mused, and started looking through the cabinets in the kitchen. Charles watched him move effortlessly around a kitchen with which he was obviously intimately familiar. 

Everything was so quiet here, now that they were outside of the bar. Charles often took it for granted that he was now able to make the noise coming from other people’s heads quiet down more or less at will. He took it for granted until he was alone and out of range and the noise had stopped. 

He wasn’t alone here, but there was nothing coming from Erik’s brain. Nothing that Charles could make sense of, at any rate. Erik clearly had a lot going on inside his gorgeous head, anyone could look into his eyes and see that. What Charles couldn’t figure out was why he couldn’t hear it. He tried again now, as Erik puttered around the kitchen looking in the cupboards for the Glenmorangie.

It was like brushing up against the ocean. Charles tried and tried to open Erik’s mind, to find whatever he was hiding in that beautiful brain of his, but the harder he tried, the more he was overwhelmed with what felt like salty waves washing over his own mind . He felt the blue expanse of the sea of Erik’s thoughts, but couldn’t see anything that was swimming around inside. 

“Here it is!” Erik emerged from the walk-in food pantry into which he had briefly disappeared, holding a bottle of light amber colored liquid. 

“Oh, I haven’t had Glenmorangie in far too long,” Charles said, remembering back to the one glorious weekend he had experienced over a decade ago touring various distilleries in Scotland. 

“It’s time you have it again!” Erik poured them each a generous serving in two small whiskey glasses. He offered Charles a glass, then held his own aloft. “A toast, to new beginnings, to bright futures in comedy, and, erm,” Erik trailed off here, and if Charles was not wildly mistaken, Erik’s eyes traveled the full length of his body before mumbling a finish to the toast that Charles frankly didn’t care if he heard. The implication in Erik’s actions was more than enough. 

“A toast to the two best looking men in this whole bar,” Charles supplied, raising his own glass and clinking it with Erik’s. 

A half smile flickered across Erik’s face and Charles felt a thrill in his stomach. It was unbelievably satisfying to be the person to elicit that type of response in Erik, brief though it may have been. 

“So about what you were saying in the bar,” Erik said. He swirled his whiskey in the glass and took another sip. “As comics, it’s slightly difficult to tell when, shall we say, interested parties are actually interested and when they are joking again.” 

“Try me,” Charles said.

“Well,” Erik said. He put his glass down. “I would like you to take off your shirt.”

Charles obliged. He was under no illusions about his appearance--he knew he wasn’t exactly cut like a Greek God or anything, but he had consistently been told by sexual partners that his “dad bod” was something that warranted high praise. He would leave that up to Erik to decide for sure, though. He allowed his shirt to pool around the back side of his ankles after dropping it to the floor, and looked up at Erik. 

He had chosen the right time to look up at Erik, as the man was worrying the corner of his lip between his teeth, and was watching Charles like he hadn’t eaten in days. Oh, this was going to be just _delicious_. 

“Did you want me to fold my shirt up?” asked Charles, the picture of innocence. 

“Hang it up. In the bedroom,” Erik answered. 

“Are you coming with me?” asked Charles. 

“I’ll be right behind you,” Erik said. Charles did as he was told, and bent over slowly to pick up his shirt. He walked upstairs at a deliberate pace, hoping Erik was watching his legs in the pants he was wearing because these pants made Charles’s legs look ten miles long. He could feel Erik’s eyes on him from behind, their energy hot and concentrated. There was a specific exhilaration to being watched like this, not unlike the moment right before sailing over a giant cliff into the stormy waters below. 

“Velvet hangers,” Charles remarked, hanging his shirt up carefully and rebuttoning all the buttons and reveling in Erik’s eyes on his back. Charles hoped he was watching the way his back muscles moved subtly with the buttoning motions, he knew he liked the way that looked. 

“Now your pants,” Erik said, his voice still low. 

“Do you want me to turn around?” asked Charles, looking over his shoulder at Erik. The sight of Erik looking at him with his hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes still dark and hooded, and a definite bulge below Erik’s belt sent an electric thrill down Charles’s spine.

“No.” Erik said. 

Charles took off his pants. The fact that the anticipation of what Erik was going to ask him to do next was making him hard was going to become painfully obvious the moment he turned around. He looked up at the ceiling and took a calming breath. His racing heart didn’t want to be calmed, it wanted something else. Something only Erik could give him. Charles hung up the pants and turned off the closet light, watching the yellow iridescence flicker briefly before it extinguished. 

Charles felt a small _whoosh_ of air as Erik closed the distance between them and took two firm handfuls of his ass, which was still clothed, but with only the thin layer of his boxer shorts.. The breath he was trying to take in got caught in his throat instead. Erik kneaded Charles’s ass in his hands, and Charles let out the same breath through pursed lips. 

“What else do you want?” Charles asked. He turned his head back to look at Erik right as Erik was burying his nose in Charles’s neck. They collided on the way in, and separated briefly to rub the offended areas. Charles turned around to face Erik, and his desire was more than apparent now, especially judging by the way Erik’s eyes were obviously struggling to stop looking at his tented underwear. 

“Take off the rest of your clothes,” Erik said, and he backed up and sat down on the bed to watch Charles do as he was told. 


	8. It's lucky that's what was on your mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles really wishes he could read Erik's mind right about now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna dump several chapters here....I've been writing a fair amount just have been forgetting to post!

Once Charles was fully naked, he felt a familiar surge of confidence. Erik was very clearly worked up while he was sitting on the bed, and Charles was the cause. Charles felt like he was twice his normal size. He walked over to Erik and knelt in front of him, spreading Erik’s legs to make room for himself in between them, and then running his hands down Erik’s chest ( _ god,  _ the man chose soft shirts) and his thighs. 

“You know what to do,” Erik said, his voice rasping on the last word. Charles ran a hand through his hair and smirked up at Erik. 

“I don’t,” he said, playing innocent again. “I thought you were in charge.” 

Erik groaned and threw his head back. Charles grinned. 

“Take my pants off and put your mouth on me right now,” Erik demanded. Charles pulled Erik to his feet, intending to then take off his pants, but Erik, seeming to lose a little of his so tightly fought-for control, grabbed Charles by the shoulders and pulled him in and kissed him. 

Erik’s lips met Charles’s, and Charles felt something sharp and frigid roll through him. But not frigid in the way that he typically associated with no longer wanting sex. Kissing Erik felt like stepping outside onto a glacier, it was all electric blues and white edges, it was his eyes opening into a sub-zero day, it was the way snow and ice felt like excitement and possibility and razor-sharp  _ awakeness _ . Charles kissed Erik back with a hunger he knew he had been feeling for some time now but had been too nervous to express, but now that he was allowed to satisfy the hunger, he did so like a man starved. 

Erik held Charles flush up against his body, and the contrast of the fabric of Erik’s clothing against Charles’s unclothed skin was breathtaking. Charles had always thrived on a little bit of a power differential, and it seemed Erik did too. 

Charles let his hands drift down towards Erik’s belt and he undid the buckle, unzipped Erik’s pants, and with some effort he pulled down both Erik’s pants and his boxer shorts at the same time. 

Watching Erik’s erection spring free was mesmerizing, and Charles forgot all about the setup they had just minutes ago and he dropped to his knees and rested his hands on Erik’s now bare hips. He kneaded the soft spot just next to Erik’s hipbones, and rested his face briefly in Erik’s coppery pubic hair. The smell was exactly as intoxicating as Charles had hoped. 

He pulled his head back just slightly to get a better look at Erik’s cock. He kissed each side of it, and was pleased to hear a sharp intake of breath from Erik. Charles gently kissed the head, then kissed his way up and down each side of Erik’s shaft, reveling in the smooth texture as he went. He was peripherally aware of the increasing pace of Erik’s breathing as he worked, but was too caught up in the heady combination of the taste and texture of Erik and the intense feeling of Erik’s eyes boring into him from above. 

Charles decided after a few minutes that enough teasing had been done. He looked up at Erik and maintained as much eye contact as he could as he took Erik fully into his mouth for the first time. Erik’s eyes rolled upwards as Charles moved his mouth further down Erik’s cock, and Charles allowed his own eyes to flutter shut so he could focus on the smell and taste. 

Erik was so delightfully sensitive, and Charles felt a powerful satisfaction in experimenting with movements and tongue swirls and suction that elicited different noises and twitches from Erik. It didn’t take long before Erik wound his hands in Charles’s hair for more stability, and Charles picked up the pace. Erik’s breathing grew more rhythmic and heavy, and Charles didn’t relent until he felt Erik shooting down the back of his throat. Charles sucked Erik a few more times until he was sure he had finished completely, then rested back on his haunches and wiped his mouth. He looked up at Erik. Erik’s eyes were still shut, and he stumbled backwards to collapse onto the bed. 

Erik could barely open his eyes. “I came harder than I have in years,” he informed Charles, and blew out a long breath through pursed lips. “Holy shit, where did you  _ learn _ all of that?” 

Charles stood up from his position on the ground (which Erik very much liked him in, but he was itching to return Charles’s generosity and they couldn’t both be on the ground if Erik was doing the giving this time around. He was too old for that kind of backache). He walked over to the bed and laid down next to Erik, but on his side and curled up just a little bit. It was such a natural, fluid motion for him to assume a partial fetal position. Erik was touched by the unthinking vulnerability Charles showed him. 

“I just did what I thought you might like,” Charles answered, tracing a finger down the side of Erik’s jawline that he could reach. Erik couldn’t help a sigh escaping his throat. Christ, the man had him swooning like a teenager. He hoped Charles couldn’t see what he was sure were literal hearts forming in his eyes. 

“Well, it was very,” Erik took another deep breath before he finally felt like he had caught the breath Charles had stolen from him. “It was very thoughtful of you,” Erik finished. 

“I was just doing what you asked,” Charles said. Erik turned his head to look at Charles face to face and was not surprised to see a half smile on the smaller man’s face. 

“You did more than I asked. You were very, very good.” Erik bit his lip. He knew what he wanted to do to Charles but he wasn’t sure how to ask. 

“What do you want to do to me?” asked Charles. It was almost as if the man could read his mind. 

Something in Erik went suddenly still.  _ Could  _ Charles read his mind? Erik curled his fingers in his palm, then brought his thumb forward, and a metal hanger emerged from the closet, floating of its own (seeming) volition in front of Charles and Erik. Charles turned onto his back to watch the hanger as Erik manipulated it in mid-air into the shape of what was unmistakably a sunflower. Erik made the hanger float down and lay in between them. Charles smiled. 

“I’ve always admired your abilities,” Charles said. “It’s beautiful, the way you manipulate metal without any seeming conscious thought, you just do it. You and the metal seem like you’re on the same mental wavelength.”

“Thank you,” Erik said. “Do you have...can you….do you know how….” 

“Are you trying to ask if I’m a mutant as well?” asked Charles. His expression was kind. 

“Yeah,” said Erik. “Are you?” 

“Yes,” Charles said, “though my power isn’t as visible. I’m a telepath, so most of the time people don’t know that I can hear what’s going on inside their heads. Most of their heads, anyways.” 

“You’re saying you’re a telepath with limits?” asked Erik. He was slightly bemused, that didn’t seem entirely possible. But maybe his own knowledge of mutantdom was limited. 

“It happens,” Charles said. “Some telepaths find their abilities limited by certain natural features, like they can’t read clearly next to enormous mountains or bodies of water. But that’s generally right next to those features, the effect attenuates after about five miles. Some find themselves having more difficulty reading certain other mutants, like some powers disrupt their ability.”

“Can you read my mind?” asked Erik. He didn’t expect the direct question to come as quickly as it did, but he supposed he had better cut to the chase. His mind had been running a million miles a minute ever since the thought of Charles being able to read his mind had crossed it. 

“No, I can’t,” said Charles, and Erik looked him in the eyes for several long moments, trying to discern if he was lying. Charles smiled at him again. The man might not be able to read his mind, but he was certainly perceptive. “I’m telling the truth, Erik. I wish I could read your mind, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t tried to, many, many times. Every time I do, it’s like I’m running up against a transparent wall that’s blocking out the ocean. I know what your mind’s edge feels like, I guess, and that’s what it is. But that’s as far as I’m able to go. I don’t know what you’re thinking, ever, and I really wish that I did.” 

“Well,” Erik said, and this time he was the one smiling (Charles’s speech had felt honest to Erik), “it looks like you’ll have to do the unthinkable and ask me what’s on my mind.” As he spoke, Erik closed the small amount of distance between himself and Charles, and he straddled Charles. 

“What’s--” Charles had to pause speaking to draw in breath that Erik hoped he had taken from Charles. “What’s on your mind, Erik?” 

“What’s on my mind?” repeated Erik. “What’s on my mind is how your face is going to look when I make you cum in the next---well, however long it takes.” 

“It’s lucky that’s what’s on your mind,” breathed Charles, “because I was hoping to show that to you.” 

Erik made delightfully and brutally quick work of Charles, sinking between his thighs and reveling in every taste and texture and sound that led Charles to a fast and furious orgasm in Erik’s mouth. He gagged a little bit on the swallowing, but wasn’t too concerned about it in the wake of the completely wrecked expression on Charles’s face when he was finally able to prop himself up, and look Erik in the eyes. 

“I wanted it to take a little longer than that,” Charles gasped, obviously not able to completely form coherent sentences yet, but giving it his best go. 

“I know you did, but you’ll take my pace this time,” Erik said, and held Charles’s face gently in his hands to kiss him. 

“Yeah, I will, won’t I,” Charles said, his voice bordering on floaty. Erik loved basking in the post coital headspace with a partner like this. He moved to a better position on the bed. 

“I don’t know if you like to-well, if you want to--” Erik held one of his arms open and hoped Charles would intuit the rest. The would-be mindreader knew exactly what Erik was trying to say, and nestled himself at Erik’s side and under his arm. 

Erik rested his face in Charles’s hair and inhaled the scent of him. Things weren’t going to be the same after this. 


	9. Don't fuck this up!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look guys, it's a quar fic. Take it for what it is. <3 I am posting the rest pretty much all as is. Charles experiences the next competition round!

The next stage of the competition had arrived, and Charles was going to be given a little more time on stage this round. There were only 5 contestants left, with two rounds to go after this one. He now had to find enough material to fill 10 minutes. This would be a challenge in and of itself, but now he was grappling with the fact that his feelings for Erik were deepening beyond the crush he had initially had and far beyond the raw sexual energy between them. Given the sex they had engaged in over the past few days, this was saying something. 

It wasn’t as if Erik didn’t know. Or at least, Charles was pretty sure he had some inkling. He had curled up under the man’s arms like a small child, for god’s sake. Not that Charles regretted doing any of that. He was a snuggler, and he wasn’t going to pretend like he wasn’t. 

But Charles also couldn’t pretend like it didn’t feel vulnerable to expose how much he wanted to breathe Erik in. How much he wanted to be completely consumed by Erik’s presence, to be so close to him (and inside him, at some point, but that was going to have to be a topic of discussion for a later encounter between them) that he could feel his pulse. How he wanted to know everything that was going on in that unknowable mind, every crash of an ocean wave and every pulse of energy. He couldn’t pretend like that didn’t feel vulnerable. Because it did. 

At that moment, Charles knew what he had to explore in his 10 minute set for the next round of the competition. In his now empty townhome (his? Erik’s, really. Charles didn’t want to think about how much the townhome was starting to feel like his home, proper), he took out his laptop and began to write. 

“Most people in the world know that mutants exist, and that we’re here to terrorize your families and assert our supremacy over you poor, lower-evolved humans.” Charles began his set with this line, and breathed a huge sigh of relief that the crowd read this opening line correctly and laughed. 

“I myself am, in fact, a mutant.” Charles continued. The crowd went silent at this line. Apparently, this wasn’t as obvious as Charles had hoped. “I suppose you all are wondering where I left my blue skin or pointed ears or sharp teeth,” he carried on. “Well, I left them in the same deep dark closet that held my determination to pretend like I am straight, and it turns out it’s stored right next to your racist ideals, so you know where you need to look now.” 

Nervous chuckles passed through the crowd. 

Charles continued his set, laying out the reasons why he never understood why the mutant community felt so vulnerable, because he had always felt some level of power in his mutation. His lighthearted jabs at himself won the crowd back over, piece by piece, and he could feel them re-warming to him after that initial dead silence. 

It was true, of course. While learning how to cut through the noise being a telepath had certainly been difficult, Charles had never understood why other mutants felt like outcasts or outsiders or vulnerable. He explained the development of his powers to the crowd, and how he delighted in using them for everything from reading a lover’s mind to find out what they wanted exactly to reading a would-be racist’s mind to beat them to the snappy retort. 

Charles could feel the crowd settling back into their comfort, back into thinking that his set was going to be easy laughs. He played this for as long as he could, taking them through his journey of becoming more aware that, hey, there were groups of mutants that suffered far worse stigmatization and oppression than he did, and maybe just because he had students make fun of his elbow patches didn’t mean mind reading college professors were a legally protected category of person. 

But this set, instead of leaving the stage with their laughter ringing in his ears, Charles left them with silence. He finished his set by explaining that he had lived in this ivory tower of mutanthood for much of his life, seemingly invulnerable to the normal issues that mutants faced. He had no limitations or vulnerabilities. But he had forgotten that even the tallest ivory tower was not immune to just being fucking bulldozed to the ground with no warning. And now that he was face to face with dark, damp earth again, he didn’t know how to eat crow and tell his fellow mutants that he had something to learn from them. 

As he left the stage after his set, he turned his head briefly to look at Erik in his Chair of Judgment. Their eyes locked briefly, Erik’s boring intensely into Charles. Before the gaze broke, Charles was certain he heard Erik utter a breathy “a-ha” that he hoped to god the cameras caught. 

______

“Obviously, he’s moving on,” Rogue said to Erik, flipping through her production notes. 

“Naturally. But I can’t let it get out that the two of us are….well, you know,” Erik said, waving a hand.

“I’m not a telepath like he is,” Rogue said, “but if he breaks your heart I will gladly lay one single finger on him.” 

Erik knew Rogue was trying to make light of the situation, but he could hear the hurt behind her joke. 

“Want me to put on my jacket and gloves?” asked Erik, looking at her kindly. 

“And your neck buff,” Rogue added. Erik obliged, and let Rogue gingerly fold herself against him, making sure that none of her skin was touching any of his skin. It was the only way they knew of that she could safely receive physical contact. He felt Rogue sigh against his chest. 

“I will actually kill him if he hurts you, though,” Rogue said before she separated from Erik. He laughed. 

“I appreciate that,” Erik said. 

___

“So I’m moving on?” asked Charles, somewhat dumbfounded by the news. He had some sort of inkling that this level of vulnerability in his standup would create some waves, but he had anticipated that those waves would mean his expulsion from the competition. 

“You show incredible promise,” Erik said. The strength of this statement was almost obscured by his neutral tone. Charles had to mentally rewind what Erik had said and replay the memory of it over in his mind. 

“This is just a hobby for me,” he said slowly. 

“Don’t hedge,” Erik said. “It’s not a hobby and you know it. We are in a rare time as comics and mutants where successful comics are the ones that are both achingly vulnerable and razor sharp funny at the same time. You’re not all the way there, but the way that you approach comedy is refreshing and has the potential to genuinely change lives. So don’t fuck up this next round.” 


	10. A metallic taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles meets a certain....metalhead, if you will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyone else a huge slut for sebastian shaw as a villain? just me?

Erik left the room, and left Charles to deal with the swirling emotions left over from the set and from Erik somehow telling him he had incredible promise. Charles repeated that back to himself. Erik. Telling him. That he had incredible promise. 

The dressing room started to melt away around him and Charles closed his eyes and settled into the soft sound of the always-on radio inside his mind. 

Outside of the dressing room, Charles heard a gentle cacophony of voices and thoughts discussing the latest shoot. They all melded together in his mind for some time, until he sank further into himself, creating more space in his mind for the dialogue to unfold and stretch into its different shapes, each a characteristic thumbprint of the speaker or thinker. 

_ Long day. Still have to pick up groceries after work. Goddammit.  _ A stagehand, one whom Charles had definitely seen before but he couldn’t dial up the name. 

_ Lot of good competition today. These kids are going to shine in the finals.  _ A producer of the show, Charles had only seen her once but she had an old and wise air about her, someone who clearly understood when someone had potential and when they didn’t. Charles trusted her judgment. 

_ This show is a long haul. There’s too much going on and Erik will never settle on a winner. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all an extended bit to boost his own profile, especially after he didn’t book that last Netflix special he was really hoping to book.  _ Now, this was a voice Charles did not recognize. He was a highly pattern-oriented thinker and usually had no trouble cataloguing the voices he heard and saving the information for the next time he heard the voice. But this voice was completely new. 

Charles opened the door to the dressing room, listening hard for the last voice, trying to see if it was coming from anywhere close by. 

_ It’s ridiculous, really. Astonishing that the network gave him as much airtime as they have.  _ The unfamiliar voice had a metallic edge to it that Charles didn’t like at all. He exited the dressing room and walked towards the low hum of out-loud voices coming from a break room. He hovered outside the break room unsure if he should go in. 

_ At least the network bigwigs will be here next week, then they can see what a waste of time this is.  _ Somehow, the metallic voice left a coppery taste on Charles’s tongue, as if it had sunk in there before he could realize it was happening and do something about it. 

“Seb, there’s no reason to be such a downer!” Someone inside the break room was talking to the metallic voice! 

“Really? After we’ve been working fifteen hour days for three weeks? I’m the one being a downer?” The metallic voice speaking aloud sounded exactly like he did speaking internally. 

Charles was surprised by this, those two things didn’t always line up with people. 

“Sebastian, please,” the same person spoke up again. “This is an exciting new concept, w hate it!” 

“I don’t suddenly hate it, I hate that it’s been eating our schedules alive and it’s just to boost Erik’s profile anyways, he doesn’t give a shit about these up and coming comics. They deserve someone who is actually looking out for their career development and wants to give them real exposure.” The metallic voiced man, who Charles assumed was named Sebastian, finished speaking this sentence right as Charles had screwed his courage to the sticking palace and crossed the doorway into the break room. 

The entire room went silent once he entered. Clearly, they recognized him. 

“Charles!” Sebastian said brightly. “Or do you prefer Professor Xavier?” The brightness in his voice felt like sunlight reflecting off of a bronze exterior to a building--harsh and like it was about to burn a hole in Charles’s skin. But he couldn’t let on about any of that, this wasn’t the time. 

________

NEW CONTENT AS OF JULY 26 

“Either is fine,” Charles said, “though I do worry about encouraging any latent hot for teacher fetishes.” 

Sebastian laughed. Charles felt uncomfortable. He was not a confrontation-averse person, but something in Sebastian’s voice made him feel like there was latent truth to what the man was saying, latent truth that Charles didn’t particularly care to dwell on for too long, lest he start to doubt Erik’s intentions with him. 

Charles made his way to the coffee pot in the breakroom, hoping that would be enough of a distraction to shake him out of whatever haze of doubt and fear Sebastian’s words had put him into. 

But as the coffee poured into the mug, Charles’s state only grew worse. What if everything Sebastian said was true? Charles couldn’t remember the last successful set from Erik in the past 5 years, maybe he was trying to cause a career renaissance instead of actually nurture new talent like he had said. Charles hadn’t thought to not take Erik seriously, not to take him at his word. Erik seemed like the type of person that would always speak his mind, Charles had always read him as a straight shooter. 

Except, Charles hadn’t read him at all. Erik had been the only person in this entire godforsaken world that Charles was unable to read. And so Charles had trusted him. Trusted him with what he had never thought would be anything more than a lark, anything more than just a silly game show that Charles would have never thought could have been a career. And Erik had given him hope. But should he have? Charles was an academic, there was no reason for his nighttime open mic habit to be anything more than a hobby. 

Charles left the lounge with his coffee in hand. The voices he had so carefully tuned into earlier began to fade into the background, and his own internal dialogue took center stage again right as Erik himself turned the corner. 

“Charles, are you alright?” Now, this was the really infuriating thing about Erik. Charles was the one with the mindreading powers, Charles was the one to whom no one’s mind was a secret, and yet Erik read Charles better than Charles read Erik. It was astonishing. And at this point in time, even more of a disappointment. 

“Where have you been?” demanded Charles. “I’ve just been in the staff lounge, walking all around this goddamned studio, trying to find you to discuss the specifics of my next set, and instead I find--instead I find--” 

“Instead you find what?” Erik’s face betrayed confusion, anticipation, dread. 

“I found your own selfish ambition.” Charles hated that his voice was shaking on the delivery. He hated that the words felt true coming out of his mouth, hurtful though they might be to the closest thing he had ever found to a soulmate. But the sentence rang in his chest with deadly accuracy. He should have never believed that some glitzy Hollywood game show was anything other than a publicity stunt for the most powerful participants. How foolish he had been. 

“Charles, what the hell do you mean?” Erik looked genuinely panicked now, but Charles was beyond the point of caring what Erik thought in this moment. 

“I have to go,” Charles said, ashamed that he couldn’t choke back the tears as he spoke. 

“Charles!” Erik shouted after his retreating back, but Charles was too far gone. 

_______

Erik sat at the bar in the Lion’s Head, nursing a neat whiskey and massaging his temple with his free hand. 

“Hey!” the bartender snapped at him. Erik looked up to find several knives floating just a few inches above the bar itself. He removed his hand from his temple and shook it a few times, as if there were cobwebs on it. 

“Sorry,” Erik muttered. “My fault.” 

“Damn right it’s your fault,” the bartender muttered, and handed him another whiskey. Erik accepted with no further snark. 

Something was afoot. Erik wasn’t entirely sure why it was news to Charles that a hoped-for side effect of the Make Me Laugh show was raising his own profile, that was why most comics did shows like this. But Erik hadn’t known that he would encounter talent like Charles’s as he was doing the show, and once he had, it had been a consuming force in his life to nurture that talent as much as he possibly could in order to give it the stage that it deserved. 

Comics like Charles were rare. Most comics had to pay their dues in bomb after bomb, mediocre set after mediocre set, but Charles just had a way of getting the crowd on his side no matter what he did. It was entrancing, the way he managed to make any audience eat out of the palm of his hand after only minutes in their company. 

That kind of talent made Erik forget any of his own ambitions. That kind of talent filled Erik with an evangelistic zeal that he would not be able to shake, at least until Charles had booked his own Netflix special. 

There was only one answer for the bullshit that was afoot here, Erik knew that much. And he knew the answer’s name was Sebastian Shaw. Shaw had been a longtime member of the production team on many of Erik’s shows and specials, and Erik trusted him. Or at least, he thought he could. 

“Erik!” someone called his name from across the pub. 

Well, if you speak of the devil. 

“Seb,” Erik returned, though more icily than he had originally meant to. 

“Things alright? Looks like you are a few more whiskeys deep than usual tonight,” Sebastian clapped him on the shoulder. 

“Fine, fine,” Erik said. 

“How was the last shoot for you, then?” asked Sebastian, sitting down next to him. 

“Exhausting, but exhilarating,” Erik answered honestly. “That Xavier kid is a huge talent, I can’t believe we bagged him here.” 

“He’s older than you are,” Sebastian corrected him mildly. “And besides, that’s not really the point of all of this, is it?” Erik looked up at Shaw and was disconcerted to find his eyebrows moving up and down in a suggestive manner, as if Erik knew what he was talking about. Erik did know what he was talking about, but he didn’t like it. 

____


	11. That's showbiz, baby.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heavily drawing from that one fic where Erik is modeled after Louis CK (pre us knowing he was shitty lol) and he goes on a rant about how sexy he thinks charles is. if any of you kind commenters remember this fic tell me and i'll link it bc i can't remember the name or the author!!!!   
> kill me!

Charles couldn’t pack up his things fast enough. There was so much racing through his mind, he could hardly keep up with it all. Of course, the fact that his ability to filter out the noise in other people’s heads went down significantly when his head was tangled up like this didn’t help. 

How could he have been so stupid? A comic like Erik wasn’t going to start a reality show out of the goodness of his own heart. There was always going to be an ulterior motive. There was always going to be an element of Erik trying to raise his own profile. That was showbiz, baby. It was dog eat dog, and Charles should have known that. 

He finished packing his bag and took one last look all around the townhouse. It was difficult to look at it now, he couldn’t bear to see the places where he and Erik had spent so many nights together exploring one another, body and soul. But they were right in front of him, taunting him. 

Charles never expected to meet anyone whose mind he couldn’t read. He assumed he would always have full and easy access to the minds of everyone around him, and he had begun to frame that as a positive in order to deal with the difficulties of being a radio station for the minds of everyone around him, at least he didn’t have to deal with wondering what was inside the heads of people close to him. He had made peace with his noisy world.

He never expected to meet someone who didn’t live in his noisy world, much less fall for someone whose mind he would not have access to. He hated how vulnerable it made him feel, how he spent nights wondering what Erik really thought of him, wondering what Erik was thinking when they were laying in bed together, and wondering when they would see each other next, instead of just divining that information by listening for long enough. 

Well, he would be sure not to make that same mistake again. Charles turned off the lights at the front door of the townhouse and made his way down the stairs and into the cab waiting for him on the street. 

“Where to?” the driver said as he settled into the backseat.

“Heathrow Airport,” Charles said, hoping that the shaking in his voice wasn’t as obvious as he felt it was. 

______

Erik began moving through his checklist for the shoot. The set was looking good, the live audience was all ticketed and lined up outside, all that was left was to check in with his performers. He made his way to each individual dressing room, pleased with himself that he was able to offer them individual dressing rooms at this point in time. Earlier in the show they had to share, and if Erik knew anything about comics, he knew they didn’t share anything well, whether that was feelings, the spotlight, or space. 

He arrived at Charles’s dressing room and knocked on the door. No response.

“Charles?” Erik called through the door. “Charles, is it alright if I come in?” Still no response. Erik felt his stomach turn. This felt like a bad movie climax. 

“Charles?” Erik called again, hoping that Charles just had headphones in and wasn’t listening. Still nothing. Erik turned the door handle and pushed it open. No stirrings, no sharp intake of breath to indicate that he was disturbing someone deep in concentration, no nothing. 

The dressing room was empty. Everything inside had been put away neatly, as if it had never been used. If Erik didn’t know what Charles’s presence felt like, if he didn’t know the traces that golden sunlight left behind when it had shone into a room hungry for illumination, he would have never known Charles had been here in the first place. 

Erik sat in the middle of the room and buried his face in his hands. He wanted so desperately to remember what it felt like to have Charles shine on him, to feel his light warm the ice cliffs that surrounded his heart, to feel the flashes of verdant life that sprung up between them when they were together. 

But all he felt was cold, icy loneliness. Charles was gone, and Erik had driven him away. There was no way around it.

“Erik?” Rogue had peeked her head around the doorjamb and was looking inside Charles’s dressing room, looking at Erik in a goddamn state on the floor. She rushed to his side, though for her that meant approximately six inches from him, enough that he could feel the heat coming off her body but not actually touch her. It was kind of like a hug, at least as close to one as they could get without preparing for it. 

“I’m sorry, I know the shoot is about to start,” Erik said, and he hated that his voice was catching in his throat the way it was. 

**Week of Aug 18 Content**

“What happened?” Rogue’s voice had taken on a low, borderline dangerous quality that Erik did not hear very often. 

“He’s gone,” was all Erik could manage before tears started to roll down his cheeks. He brushed them away with the heel of his hand as hard as he could, hoping the force would make them stop coming in the first place. But there was no use. Everything began to hit him at once, every sprout of green, gorgeous life that Charles had brought to him felt like it was being swallowed up in a too-early frost. The warm sunshine that he had begun to take for granted in his life was growing distant and icy all over again, and it was his fault. He had driven away the love of his life, and as Erik thought the phrase he knew it was true. The hard part was going to be saying it out loud. 

“Charles?” Rogue asked. “CHARLES?” her voice grew to a yell, and Erik moved to quiet her down, he didn’t want to attract any attention to his already messy state. 

“It’s my fault, he’s gone, don’t try anything, please.” Erik barely registered the words that were coming out of his mouth. His performer brain was starting to click into action, figuring out what he needed to do in the next hour to survive this show before he made it home for the night. 

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Rogue said under her breath, but Erik caught it. She amended. “I won’t actually kill him, I won’t touch him,” she promised. “But I am going to fucking kill him. 

Erik stood up. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. A little puffy-eyed. Rogue was eyeing him critically as well, but the focused look in her eyes told Erik that she knew what to do to solve this particular issue. God fucking bless her, the woman was much more calm in a storm than anyone gave her credit for. 

“Here, I’m not a makeup artist, but I know a thing or two about needing to manufacture a little goddamn privacy for yourself when feelings run high,” Rogue told him, unearthing what Erik recognized to be some concealer in an appropriate shade. She applied it dexterously to the area around his eyes using a brush. Even so, Erik felt slight flashes of the prickling heat that was constantly present on her skin, a reminder of her latent power and why he was grateful to have her on his side. 

“Better,” Rogue said, finishing up and assessing her work. “Alright, let’s go.” 

They made their way to the studio where the remaining comics were checking their notes and finding their waters. They cowered just a little bit as Erik walked by. Usually, the slight scrunch in stature of people that found Erik intimidating would be a huge ego boost, but today it was just depressing. Today, it just reminded him of the one person who had never cowered before him in his life, who grew under his gaze. 

“We are live in three minutes!” The director called. “Places!” 

Erik took his place on stage and adjusted his cuffs, trying to embody his comedic persona. Comedy had a vulnerability and honesty about it that tended to make people think that comics were just being themselves on stage, but that wasn’t quite on the mark. Successful comics were always a slightly manufactured, retouched, and embossed version of themselves. The subtle differentiation was what often made it so hard for him and other successful comics of his stature to find romantic partners, because those outside of the comedy world often couldn’t grasp the difference. 

“In three! Two!” The director mouthed the ‘one’ and pointed at Erik. 

“Ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon, we have made it to the finale,” Erik began as the spotlight washed over him and the blinking red light from the main cameras occupied a corner of his eye.

“The top four comics have become the top three due to unforeseen circumstances,” Erik continued, “and will therefore be receiving an extra two minutes each on top of their ten-minute sets. As always, I will be watching from on high,” he gestured to the chair behind him, “and we will finally discover if any of these people can rise to the challenge I set at the very beginning of this journey.” 

Erik spread his palms wide in anticipation of the show’s title coming out of his mouth. “Comics,” he said. “It’s time to  _ make me laugh _ .” He paused for just a brief moment in between each word, allowing for the people watching to say it with him. The red light reflected in the corner of his eye continued to blink at a steady pace, and Erik paused.Something unfolded inside him.

“But before we do that,” he began. “I have something I want to say.” He could almost feel the violent intake of breath from the director watching nearby, and he held up his hand in an attempt to stay any hasty action from the man to cut off the live broadcast. 

“There’s a catchphrase that gets thrown around a lot in any writing community, whether it’s screenwriters or novelists or comics, and that’s ‘write what you know’.” Erik offered up finger quotations to punctuate. “Write what you know.” he repeated. “Awfully bold of the coiners of that catchphrase to assume that someone like me knows literally anything at all.” 

“I’ve still somehow followed it,” he continued. “I write what I know. I write about being a mutant in a society that somehow thinks we are lesser than and planning to overtake the government.” He paused. “That second part is true, but it’s my fault it got out. I left my dream diary laying around in broad daylight.” Another pause for laughter. 

“I write about loneliness, and muse about how ridiculous it is that I can’t seem to find men who are willing to put up with prolonged bouts of moodiness after I bomb a set, men who are willing to nurse my fragile ego after I workshopped a joke and it had to get cut from the final set anyways, men who are willing to shower me with adoration after they walk into a bit that I am practicing on them without telling them. It’s not much to ask.” Erik paced the stage and looked down the barrel of a nearby camera, the light it emitted creating a blue aura around the lens. 

“It’s not much to ask,” he said again, as though he were convincing himself. “Except for it is completely unreasonable to ask another human being to hold up my entire heart, especially when it is as fragile and dependent on adoration from strangers as it is.” 

Erik paced the stage again, then planted himself firmly in the center. “I write what I know, but the problem is, I know absolutely nothing. I don’t know how to maintain healthy platonic relationships, and I am surprised when all of my friends don’t want to talk to me after I have blown up at them for not giving me the right criticism on a set. I don’t know how to write a set that is honest and funny while also detaching myself from the reception of the set and not thinking that I can control my audience’s response.” 

“I don’t know much at all, it seems.” Erik rubbed his lips briefly with the tips of his fingers. “For a brief moment in time, quite recently, everything I thought I knew flipped on its head, and I found myself positively transported to, I don’t know, fucking Narnia or something, wherever it is people go when they first fall in love. The problem is, once I arrived, I thought to myself, how can I make friends with the white witch and get this place back to the eternal winter that suits it best anyhow?” Another pause for laughter, though it was definitely of the uncomfortable variety. 

“And then once I reinstated the always-winter-never-christmas state that I knew to be the natural, best state of this through-the-wardrobe wonderland, I found myself surprised when the man who had made it green and full of life decided to leave.” Erik paused here, and he could feel himself wanting to cry again, but he managed to keep the inevitable flow to a few tears only. There should really be an award waiting for him somewhere for keeping his shit together like this. 

“He left, and I’m kicking myself for thinking I knew anything at all,” Erik continued. “I’m hoping against all hope that he’s watching tonight. And if he is, all I want to say is I’m sorry. You were right, and I wasn’t truthful. I hope you can give me another chance.” 

And with that, Erik left the stage to thunderous applause while the voice-over announcer re-introduced the first comic on the docket for the evening. 


	12. an undeniable spark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> babes, who doesn't love a dramatic apology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if u want to comment please do it feeds my ego. if there's typos, sorry guys, it's a quar fic

From his living room in Australia, with the live broadcast of the finale of  _ Make Me Laugh  _ on, Charles had forgotten how to breathe. 

He stopped biting his lip first, that had to be the first step. After that, surely he’d be able to regain his breath and process what had just happened. But Charles had suddenly found that the whole world was beginning to spin around him, and intense vertigo was creeping its way into his system. He laid back on the couch and let the world spin around him, shutting his eyes to let the swirling colors engulf him. 

His heart had jumped directly into his throat, and Charles needed to decide if he was going to stuff it back down again or not. He tried to calm his breathing to think more clearly. 

Instead of some logical process that weighed the pros and cons of whether or not he should be with Erik, Charles found himself sinking into the woods of Narnia that Erik had described in his speech on Make Me Laugh. He felt the soft grass beneath him, looked up to see deciduous trees all around him, and opened his palms to the sky to feel the sun warm them. He let his eyes wander onto the bluebird sky, brightened by the sun in the corner. 

It was arresting to Charles in that moment how blue was often associated with coldness or aloofness, when it was the color of the expansive and endless sky that would gladly and gently swallow up even the most gentle icy observer. The sky would grow in its brightness as the sun made its arc through, and would become a deep navy that night, and it would still be expansive and awe inspiring and all consuming.

If Charles thought that he could somehow live his life without the endless heavens engulfing him from end to end and letting him spread out and take up space in a world that was so frequently constricting and claustrophobic--well. Charles couldn’t live that way. The alternative was a life in dim monochrome. Erik was color Charles couldn’t see with anyone else. 

The vertigo began to subside, and Charles found himself slowly coming back to reality. Was there a word for feeling clear and full of purpose and yet exposed at the same time? Charles felt as though he was preparing to trod the well-worn path between his office and lecture hall, but this time was doing it completely in the nude. Nothing to protect him, nothing to prevent him from being hurt again, only his knowledge of what he wanted and how to get it. 

He opened the Qanta app on his phone. It was time to get on a plane. 

_______________________________________________

Erik disembarked the plane in Los Angeles. There was still another 15 hour flight ahead of him, but there was time to get a smoothie before he tried to sleep in the stiff airline seats. He got in line at the nearest airport smoothie stall and looked at his phone. Twitter was still abuzz with the news of his speech on the finale of Make Me Laugh, and a hashtag had been born out of it, #ReuniteXaviSherr, which Erik found to be a poor portmanteau of their names. Surely their first names would work better in this situation, but he wasn’t the arbiter of Twitter hashtags. 

He placed his order and moved to the waiting area to keep an eye on the counter where the finished smoothies were delivered to waiting patrons. He watched other customers come and go, and let his mind enter that peaceful emptiness that sometimes came to him, watching thoughts and people come and go and not registering any one too much. 

That is, until he watched a man with thick, wavy brown hair approach the counter to retrieve his smoothie. Something about the hair was making it difficult for him to breathe. Once the man turned around and Erik recognized him, he lost the ability to process oxygen completely. 

“Erik?” Charles’s voice was so small, barely audible above the background noise of the airport. Erik just stared at him. His eyes were tinged red--was he tired from flying? Had he been crying? Both? Why was he in Los Angeles? 

“Charles,” Erik finally said. “Oh, my god. Charles.” There was a split second where Charles put his smoothie back on the counter and dropped his bag, and something slid into place. Erik closed the space between them as soon as Charles’s bag hit the floor, and crushed their lips together. 

It was like collapsing into bed after a long day. It was a steaming hot shower on a cold morning. Charles was comfort and familiarity and terror and excitement all wrapped up into one. Erik relished the feeling of their lips meeting and parting and exploring one another and he held Charles as close to him as he possibly could without crushing the smaller man.

Erik broke the embrace first but kept Charles close to him by cradling his face in his hands. He looked into Charles’s eyes, astonished at their boundless blueness and the way they were looking at him like he was a mirage, or something close to that. Christ, how did a man like this manage to care about Erik? 

“I don’t know what to say,” Charles said. “I, uh,” Charles paused for a moment and let out a short, surprisingly high-pitched giggle. He pulled Erik in and kissed him, shorter, firmer, like he was trying to make sure Erik was still there. 

“I didn’t expect to see you here, either,” Erik supplied.

Charles nodded. “Should we get our smoothies?” Erik nodded, and the pair picked up their smoothies and walked to a nearby seating area. 

_____

  
  


Charles led Erik to a pair of open seats and they sat down together. The atmosphere between them was electric and somehow lengthening. Charles felt a familiar feeling of expansiveness sitting down next to Erik. He had visited Iceland several years back and had sat atop a mossy cliff, staring out at the ocean below and the handful of ice floes that had been in the area at the time. The feeling of being high up, looking out over an expanse far below was mirrored here with Erik. 

  
Charles took a sip of his smoothie and took Erik’s hand. 

“Crowded today,” Erik remarked. The comment was so mundane, something he would say if they flew all the time. Charles felt something hitch in his chest, and he smiled.

“It really is,” Charles agreed. “When is your flight?”

“I’m not sure I care all too much about that anymore, to be honest,” Erik said. He was still watching the crowds go by. 

“Is that so?” asked Charles.

“I’d say I’m more concerned about where you want to fly instead,” Erik told him.

Charles felt something expand in his chest. He leaned over to kiss Erik right on the apple of his cheek. Erik’s eyes crinkled instinctively, like he was going to smile, but the corners of his mouth turned down slightly. This was where Charles really wished he could read Erik’s mind. 

“You alright?” asked Charles. 

“Yeah, of course,” Erik said. “I don’t want to--um,” Erik paused, and Charles briefly felt his heart speed up in his chest. 

“I don’t want to be around all of these people anymore,” Erik took Charles’s face into his hands again and kissed him softly, like he was made of glass. Charles bit the corner of his lip as they separated. 

“You know,” he said, “we don’t have to get on an airplane at all today if we don’t want to. Los Angeles is right outside these doors.” Charles gestured to the floor to ceiling windows where palm trees were actually swaying slightly in the breeze, despite the cliche of it all. 

“I’ve never actually been to Los Angeles,” Erik said. “I’ve only ever flown through.” 

“That answers that question then,” Charles said decisively. He took Erik’s hand and they stood up. “We’ll catch our bags before they go through to our final destination, come on.” 

“I’ll make a few calls,” Erik said, and smiled down at Charles. There was an undeniable spark of excitement. 


	13. you're the devil, you are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i promised you a happy ending

Three phone calls, two hours, and one visit to the customer service desk at LAX later, Charles and Erik found themselves settling in to a rented cottage on the beach in Santa Monica. Charles was battling with himself to not show the same amount of awe as he did going into the townhome in London, but he quickly lost that battle once he saw Erik marveling over the window styles.

“Floor to ceiling windows are really tremendously underrated,” Erik was saying, “it’s really not that hard to have the appropriate curtains installed to keep things private, I would expect the puller thing to be right--aha! Right here.” He pulled a cord, and curtains that fit the windows perfectly came flying out of nowhere to cover the window. Erik looked over at Charles. 

“You look hungry,” Charles said.

“Not sure that what I’m hungry for can really be cooked up in a kitchen,” Erik said. Charles felt a definitive shiver go down his spine. Erik closed the distance between the two of them and kissed Charles like a man possessed, and Charles kissed him back like he was making up for lost time. 

Charles wondered how on earth he was supposed to focus at all when Erik made him feel like his stomach was literally about to drop out of his body. Would this exhilarating feeling fade anytime soon? Charles hoped not. 

“You know what I missed the most?” Erik said between kisses down Charles’s neck, each one more electric than the last. 

“What’s that?” asked Charles, breathless. 

“Your hair,” Erik said. “Your hair. The waves in your hair are intoxicating to look at, to run my hands through, to--”

“You can pull it,” Charles finished his sentence for him. “You can pull it, I would like that, actually.”

Erik resumed kissing Charles on the mouth and began running his hands through Charles’s hair, experimenting with little tugs at the end of each traverse through. Charles had hoped Erik wouldn’t react strangely at all to his request, but it seemed to be just what Erik wanted permission to do. The feeling of the little tug at the end of Erik running his hands through Charles’s hair felt like little sparks erupting all over Charles’s scalp. 

They collapsed onto the couch in the living room of the seaside cottage, Charles on top of Erik. 

“Erik?” Charles said, pulling away from him just enough to get the words out. 

“Charles?” Erik replied, attempting to hook a loose strand of Charles’s hair behind his ear and failing because it wasn’t quite long enough. 

“Is this, uh,” Charles began, gesturing widely, “is this what you want?” 

Erik pulled him in again and kissed him, hard. “Of course this is what I want,” he said, his voice low. “I didn’t realize it’s what I wanted at first but I realize it now.”    
  


“I mean,” Charles continued, separating them again, but even more breathless this time around, “am I what you want?” Charles heard the words he spoke hang on the air, and felt a tiny twinge of insecurity that they came out so small, so vulnerable. 

“Charles Xavier,” Erik said, sitting up so he could look Charles in the eyes, at his eye level. “You are exactly what I want. You are more than enough for me, you are what I thought I would never find.” Erik held Charles’s face in his hands, and Charles felt the same rush of icy, alert, awakeness that he had felt the first time they were together. 

“You are what I want too,” Charles said. “It feels so cliche coming out of my mouth like this but you’re everything I could have hoped to have in a person, in a partner.”

These words seemed to give Erik pause, and he looked at the ceiling, Charles’s face still in his hands. When he looked back down, Charles saw that there were a few tears glistening in Erik’s eyes. 

“Even after what I did to you?” Erik asked, his voice small. “I’m sorry, I should have made everything more clear, it’s almost always a mystery to people outside of the comedy business why we do things the way that we do and I didn’t feel like explaining any of that to the contestants and I knew after you left that that was a huge mistake and I only wish now there was some way for me to--”   
  


Charles stopped him with a small kiss to the palm. “We don’t need to fixate on the past,” he said. “I forgive you. I’m here with you now.” 

A pause. Charles spoke again. “Can you forgive me? For jumping to conclusions? For assuming the worst? For not giving you the benefit of the doubt?” 

Erik kissed him on the temple. “I already have.” 

__________

Charles peeked out at the live studio audience from the wings of the stage. This was much more high stakes than any of his previous sets, but the audience looked the same. They had the same feeling about them, some suspicious of him, some primed for a good laugh, and some in that nebulous in between space where he would have to win them over eventually. 

He felt Erik’s arm wind around his waist from somewhere to his right. The wings were dark, it was almost time to call curtain. 

“You’re going to do amazing,” Erik said softly, trying not to be picked up by the microphones on stage. 

“Not as amazing as you,” Charles said, turning slightly to nuzzle into Erik’s neck. 

“The people aren’t here to see me,” Erik said, smiling.

“It’s your special!” Charles protested. 

“Sometimes people sit through a main act they don’t like because they’re riding on how much they liked the opener,” Erik said. 

“That’s a stretch, don’t you think,” Charles said, turning more completely and wrapping his arms around Erik’s neck. 

“I’m certainly riding on how much I like the opener,” Erik said, leaning down to capture Charles’s mouth in a soft kiss. 

“That so?” Charles said once they broke apart. He felt a warmth flooding through him, edged by that signature alert awakeness that he had come to associate with being around Erik. 

“Can’t you read my mind?” asked Erik, smirking and knowing the answer full well. 

“No,” Charles said, “but I can feel some of it,” he stood on his toes to be able to kiss Erik again, and focused his attention on brushing up against the edges of Erik’s icy blue thoughts. Where he brushed against them, patches of thick green grass sprang up in his wake. And while Charles would likely never be able to read Erik’s thoughts, creating green space in their shared mental expanse was all Charles needed to feel connected to Erik on a level he had never felt with anyone else. 

“I can feel you,” breathed Erik, burying his face in Charles’s neck. “In my mind. I can feel you.” 

They shared this dense, intimate space for a few more moments before Erik broke them apart at the urging of the stage manager, and Charles centered himself before going onstage. 

There was nothing to it, really. Moving onstage, telling his stories, and making them laugh. Charles was ready for them. He walked out into the spotlight. 

  
  
  


~~~Epilogue~~~

Charles was on his back, or at least he thought he was. There was definitely something solid beneath him, and definitely a ceiling above him, though it was all pretty starry and difficult to see or fully perceive at the moment. 

Erik came up for air with a soft pop. The reality of Charles’s situation came crashing down around his ears again, and he found himself furious at Erik. 

“I was so close!” gasped Charles. “Are you trying to fucking kill me?” 

“Maybe. Le petit mort, and all that,” Erik said, grinning at Charles with his sharklike teeth exposed. 

“You are an evil, evil man, Erik Lehnsherr,” Charles rebuked him as Erik took him into his mouth once more, but Erik clearly did not care for Charles’s judgment of his character, because in a few short and positively wicked movements of his mouth, Charles saw white hot flashes in front of him and came with a forcefulness nearly strong enough to give him a leg cramp. 

“Oh, my god,” Charles repeated over and over again, panting and trying to catch his breath while Erik curled up beside him. 

They laid there in near silence for several minutes while Charles collected himself and Erik ran a hand through Charles’s hair in one smooth, soothing motion. 

“You are the devil, you are,” said Charles. 

“I know,” said Erik, grinning. “I know, my love.” 

As Charles descended back to earth, he and Erik began idly discussing the details of Erik’s next tour, for which Charles would be opening the entire time. It was a risky move, combining both of their acts into one tour, especially given that the whole world knew they were dating at this point. They had discussed and made plans for the possibility that things between them wouldn’t work out while they were touring, though neither of them wished to have to execute those plans. 

Charles generally experienced the world as an extremely overwhelming place that he was able to keep at bay through sheer force of will. This was something that left him exhausted much of the time. But lying in bed with Erik and making plans to conquer the world around them? Well, that felt verdant and peaceful, and Charles couldn’t ask for much more than that. 


End file.
